This is a BBC podcast. You can get all our podcasts and our I left home at age 15 to go to Yale University and the whole that gospel music has always

had on my emotions and my soul has never diminished. I still can't hear certain songs and not almost cry.

It speaks to a part of me that is so deep that even I sometimes fear it.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

what love,

God's was something that came out of the hearts of people who trusted God even for their greatest

separate, the most heinous ordeals.

This music was born out of and during a very difficult time for African Americans and yet its

message is defiantly hopeful.

A lot of the great singers were a little bit more relaxed when it came to smoking and drinking and wearing makeup and cussing and because the money it became very secularized.

To me that's the downside.

People sing one thing, but when you see them in their lifestyle,

it's nothing like what they're singing.

Look what happened to Sam Cook. I'm Alvin Hall, financial educator and lifelong gospel music fan. Like many African Americans,

gospel has been the soundtrack of my soul, and it's been my way of connecting to God.

For the music has reached much further than the African American community.

Its uplifting and rejoicing sound has become world-famous,

a multi-million dollar music genre that in many ways has ended up becoming the beating

heart of American popular music.

But its journey from the church to the charts hasn't always been easy.

In this series, I'm going to explore how Gospel Spirit has

been affected as it moved from sacred to secular. Can Gospel actually be Gospel if it entertains as well as praises the Lord?

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